History

Recent scholarship has brought about a shift within the way Nalanda, the world’s most ancient university, is seen.

·         Nalanda, the ruins of 1 of the world’s most prestigious seats of learning, is located ninety five kilometres from Patna, the capital of Bihar, and a hundred and ten kilometer from Bodh Gaya, the location of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Declared a Word Heritage site in 2016, Nalanda is seen because the world’s most ancient university, flourishing a lot of before Europe’s oldest university, Bologna, came into being within the 11th-12th century.

·         Contemporary sources, however, describe the location as a mahavihara, an excellent monastery.

·         Nalanda, therefore, functioned as a premier monastic-cum-scholastic establishment in ancient and early medieval India.

·         Today, one will see there the remains of temples, monastic dwellings, votive structures and art works in stucco, bronze and stone dating from the fifth century C.E. to the twelfth century C.E. Literary Sources – As so much as literary sources are involved, most of the data on the history, functioning and, sometimes, the layout of the mahavihara comes from the accounts of Chinese Buddhist monks like Xuanzang(also referred to as Hiuen Tsang) and Yijing (also known as I Tsing), primarily the previous.

·         Both travelled to India and stayed in the great monastery complex in the 7th century.

·         Xuanzang’s account links each the buddha (6th century BCE) and therefore the Mauryan king Asoka (c. 268-232 BCE) with Nalanda.

·         The Chinese monk likewise credits Asoka with the development of a stupa/temple in honour of Sariputra, one among the Buddha’s nearest disciples.

·         Further, the anthropology findings—the material remains at Nalanda belong to the Gupta period/5th century C.E. onwards—do not support Xuanzang’s pre-Gupta history of the location.

·         The rulers of the Gupta family line (c. 300-600 C.E.) were sometimes famous for patronizing Brahmanical cults, however some of them as well supported Buddhism.

·         Buddhist sources indicate that the Gupta King Vikramaditya sent his queen and son Baladitya to review under the famous Buddhist scholar Vasubandhu, who was based mostly at Nalanda. Some texts mention that King Narasimhagupta became a Buddhist monk and gave up his life through meditation.

·         Xuanzang conjointly talks regarding the Guptas’ royal reference to Nalanda.

·         He reports that shortly after the Buddha’s demise, a king called Shakraditya built a monastery at the site.

·         Scholar Heras identifies Shakraditya with Kumaragupta I, Buddhagupta with Skandagupta, Tathagatagupta with Puragupta and Baladitya with Narasimhagupta. Nalanda apparently continuing to get pleasure from royal patronage in post-Gupta times as well: throughout the reign of Harshavardana (606-648 C.E.), the King of Kannauj (in Uttar Pradesh); and also the palas, who dominated over modern Bihar, West Bengal and bangladesh from the eighth through twelfth centuries. Xuangzang visited Nalanda throughout Harshavardana’s reign.

·         The PalasThePalas were known to be Buddhists.

·         Dharmapala (c. 781-821 C.E.), the second Pala king, is understood to possess supported the establishment of 2 monasteries: Somapura (better known as Paharpur, currently in Bangladesh) and Vikramshila (in Bhagalpur in Bihar).

·         An inscription from Nalanda records his gifting of a village for the maintenance of the good monastery.

·         Another inscription from the location describes Devapala (c. 821 to 861 C.E.), Dharmapala’s successor, as helping the ruler of Suvarnadvipa (Sumatra), Balaputra, build a monastery at Nalanda and acquire 5 villages to support its maintenance.

·         It is also known for several gifts to the mahavihara, again independent of the Pala kings.

·         It is wide control that Nalanda started declining within the late-Pala amount and was given a death blow around 1200 C.E by the invasion of BakhtiyarKhalji, the Afghan military commander of Delhi’s Turkish ruler QutbuddinAibek.

·         The mahavihara as a university Most of the knowledge on the functioning of Nalanda as a university—its student strength, curriculum and buildings—comes from Chinese and Tibetan texts, that additionally emphasise the purity of its monastic discipline.

·         Nalanda attracted students from China, Japan, Korea and from countries in SouthEast and Central Asia.

·         Some students argue, although not on the basis of any evidence, that Nalanda’s curriculum went beyond religious texts to incorporate literature, theology, logic, grammar, medicine, philosophy, the arts and metaphysics. Decline of Nalanda

·         The 2 major theories that specify the decline of Nalanda each refer a potential destruction of the mahavihara and of a somewhat sudden  or cataclysmal decline.

·         The commonest theory for the decline of Nalanda says the location was ransacked and destroyed by BakhtiyarKhalji.

·         This theory is entirely supported a Persian work by Minhaj al-SirajJuzjani (1193-1260) known as Tabaqat-iNasiri, which forms an elaborate history of the islamic world during the reign of the Delhi sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah (1246-66).

·         It is very important to notice that the word “Nalanda” is mentioned nowhere in Minhaj’s account.

·         The second theory broadly locates the decline in the context of the animosity between Brahmins and Buddhists.

·         It finds expression within the writings of historians like D.N. Jha, B.N.S. Yadava, R.K. Mookerji and SukumarDutt